After deciding to give up gaming on the PC my wife and I thought about buying a gaming console. We had the extra money and thought it would be nice to buy the XBOX 360 with some extras. We ended up making a trip to Walmart and buying the XBOX 360 Arcade Box set. We also bought Guitar Hero 3, Call of Duty 4, Ace Combat 6, an extra wireless controller, and the headset. All told the damage done was close to, if not a little over, $600 for it all.

I have had it for exactly a month now and have enjoyed every minute of it. Being an online gamer I bought the COD4 for that purpose. I played the game an average of 2-4 hours a week in that first month. Today I decided to fire up the console to own some noobs again and found out my XBOX Gold membership (trial) had expired but that I still had a silver. I figured all was good and attempted to login and play. To my disbelief I was informed that I could not play COD4 online without having a Gold membership. I was a little confused as I thought the silver was enough to get me into online gaming servers.

I figured I would check out the Gold Membership, thinking it would only be $20 a year at the most. I could not believe the price I saw on my screen, $7.99 a month? Are you kidding me? I can’t believe that I spent all the money on the game, provide my own internet connection, and still have to pay to play online? I own the PC version of the game and after putting $40 down on it at Best Buy I can play online to my hearts content, with no fees! I did the math and it would cost 4 times the amount of the PC version to play the XBOX 360 version online for one year. Does that not sound strange to anyone else.

When I made the swith to MAC from Windows I thought my pains were gone, little did I expect Microsoft to continue trying to dig in my pockets. So I am at a crossroad now, I refuse to pay Microsoft any more money…..period! I will not buy another product labelled or related to Microsoft. My wife and I only use the XBOX 360 about once a week and have a PS2 to enjoy. So we are trying to decide if we want to take the XBOX down to the game store and exchange it for some PS2 titles and goodies, or sell it on EBay. We called the game exchange stores and were quoted $130 for the XBOX 360 with two wireless controllers, I think that is a rip. I know I could never recoup the $600 I spent on this thing but I know I can get more on EBay for it then I could at the game store.

Anyhow, I had to vent on this one. I am amazed everyday by the ways Microsoft will continue to try to get our money.

Buyers Beware….READ THE FINE PRINT!!!